More PlayStation 5 Details Emerge

More snippe ts about the next Sony PlayStation have been confirmed by PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan and system architect Mark Cerny. The official name is PlayStation 5 (no surprises there), and it’s due on sale by November 2020, ready for a showdown with the next Xbox. It has been confirmed that the AMD-supplied Navi GPU has hardware ray tracing built in, as well as 8K support if your screen can handle it. Game storage is on SSD, and much effort has been put into reducing the footprint of games by removing duplicated data, and allowing for partial or modular installations. Games will load about 15 times faster, too, helped by PCIe 4.0 support. Physical games will use 100GB optical disks, with the optical drive doubling as a 4K Blu-ray player.

The UI has been worked over to show more information about a game before you launch it; you’ll be able to see your progress, or if your friends are playing, before you join. The new controller, the DualShock 5, will have adaptive triggers with variable levels of resistance, so different functions will feel different, such as giving weapons different trigger pulls. A lot of work has been put into the rumble, too, to try to simulate different surfaces. Another confirmed feature is a new power-saving mode that uses just half a watt. The PS5 will also be backwardly compatible with PS4 games. There will be some sort of cloud features, too, but specifics remain a secret.

Sony isn’t giving much away about the hardware, but we do know it’s set to be based around a high-end eight-core AMD Ryzen processor, and there’s a custom audio chip, claimed to be “profoundly different.” It’s still over a year away, but the PS5 is generating quite a buzz. Microsoft is going to have a fight on its hands.